Nature Friday ~ August 30, 2019

Welcome to Friday where we join our friends, Rosy and her brothers from LLB in the Our Backyard. Today let’s stroll around the Denver Botanical Gardens where ‘gardening with altitude’ is how we roll in the Mile High City.

Officially created in 1951, the Denver Botanic Gardens has come a long way from its humble roots. Beginning as a small rose garden in Denver City Park near the Museum of Natural History, it became clear the garden was a bit too public as the roses were constantly being dug up by visitors. Thus a number of influential city leaders began looking for a more secure space. They found a large flat spot a couple of miles to the south in the Cheesman Park neighborhood. Originally Denver’s first cemetery, the graves were relocated (although an occasional grave still turns up every once in a while) and the garden oasis began to evolve into what it is now. Featuring the largest collection of plants from cold temperate climates around the world, it includes seven diverse gardens that primarily include plants from Colorado and neighboring states.

Located just behind the Ruth Porter Waring House (originally used as the administration building and gift shop), the Romance Garden has a spectacular Chihuly sculpture (from the 2014 exhibit). It’s beautiful during the day but near dusk, it is even more spectacular.

At the opposite end of the gardens is the Shofu-en, or the Garden of Pine and Wind, a traditional Japanese strolling garden, another visitor favorite. Drawing its inspiration from the area’s climate and plants from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain region, there are 130 character pines transplanted from the foothills. The garden was designed by Koichi Kawana and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

No visit is complete without a stroll around the Monet Pool. The spectacular collection of water lilies in bloom this time of year are always well visited.

Courtesy of denvermodern.mariah.com

Last on this tour is the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. This structure is unlike any in the world, built from concrete (Charles Boettcher made much of his fortune in concrete), it contains faceted and curved plexiglass panels specifically designed to have the condensation flow down the structure into the watering system. When built, it was the only tropical conservatory between Missouri and San Francisco. Some 2000 species are cultivated in the conservatory.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s tour of nature in the city. The DBG is my favorite 24 acres in town and a wonderful place to spend a few hours enjoying elements of nature in a hectic world which proves you can find amazing views of nature even in an urban setting.

We wish you a terrific Labor Day ‘howliday’ weekend and hope you are able to get out and enjoy some of the many fine offerings nature provides on this last weekend of summer.

The last time we visited your ‘hood we specifically went to the see the Japanese garden because, well, Japanese. But you know what? It is not dog friendly so we were unable to visit [insert sob] so we went up to Red Rocks instead. We thought we might get an exemption because Max understands dog commands in Japanese but noooooo. But we understand that letting dogs into Shofu-en could be absolutely disastrous.

Sadly, for the so-called friendly reputation of Coloradans in general, way too many spots deny pet admittance. Sorry you weren’t able to go to Shofu-en. Perhaps all those pesky Koi have a heavy handed fin in deciding dogs are not welcome.

Cheesman Park (next door to DGB) has had a few which was big news since I lived a hop, skip and a jump from both. The digging up of public garden plants did seem pretty brazen to me. Denver has hung on to its mining camp persona for a long time.

Last weekend of summer? Or, of summer vacation (for school kids)? Down here it’ll still feel like summer for weeks after the autumn solstice. Ugh! I am SO ready for cooler days! Ducky enjoys her walks at the park, but I start to wilt in the humidity and heat.